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novel

I look at you and a sense of wonder takes me. (Homer, translated by Robert Fagles)

What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That’s a pretty good idea. I’ll give you the moon, Mary. (George Bailey, It’s A Wonderful Life)

He was my North, my South, my East and West, my working week and my Sunday rest. (W.H. Auden, Stop All the Clocks)

It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.” (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)

I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. (Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood)

Because when I look at you, I can feel it. And I look at you and I’m home. (Dory, Finding Nemo)

Deep in my soul I know that I’m your destiny. (Mulan, Mulan)

We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. (Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast)

If you’re a bird, I’m a bird. (Noah, The Notebook)

I wish I’d done everything on earth with you. (Daisy, The Great Gatsby)

But the heart’s not like a box that gets filled up. It expands in size the more you love. (Samantha, Her)

You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die. (Will, Shakespeare in Love)

I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. (Harry Burns, When Harry Met Sally)

The bookstores, the public libraries and the school libraries in rural Japan don’t really store English-language books. If they do, they’re Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. Fortunately for me, my dear friends and neighbours, Olivier and Hiromi Charles have a small collection of which I’m able to borrow. Through limited choice, I’ve had the opportunity to read some books which I wouldn’t originally judge by the cover and pick up at a bookstore. All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things by Robert Fulghum is not like any book I’ve ever read before. In fact, I believe it is more of a blog than a novel. Each chapter, written in casual first-person covers a random topic of Fulghum’s choice. The book does not work as a whole, rather as well, blog posts, snippets of musings on the author and his/our world. As per Fulghums own advice, there is no hurry in finishing it, it is best read a little bit at a time. Seeing as you’re already here and reading this blog post, I’d say you can enjoy literature in a short but sweet dose (yes, I just complimented my own prose) which makes this book perfect for you. Also, for those of us who enjoy learned advice, life wisdom and killer quotes.

“These are the things I learned (in Kindergarten):

1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don’t hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS.
6. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
7. Say you’re SORRY when you HURT somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life – learn some and drink some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Stryrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
15. Goldfish and hamster and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
16. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.”

I’ve never had the blessing of a constant elderly person in my life. This is because, when my family migrated to New Zealand from Iran, me and my grandparents became separated by seemingly infinite miles. Growing up, I envied my friends and the close relationship they had with their nana and pops’ – in particular, Kiwi grandmas! Compared to the old people in Iran, these women were so healthy, care-free and always occupied with baking biscuits and pavlovas.

When I grew older, learnt English and became exposed to literature and media, my yearnings intensified. The grandparents in the books I read and the movies I watched were almost always offering kind and valuable guidance to their grandchild. Where was my life-changing, my eye-opening advice?

Eventually, I must have reached a point where I let go of the resentment and accepted my life, for the absence stopped bothering me as much.

Reading Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, reminded me of that intense longing I had consciously (or subconsciously) buried inside. Tuesdays with Morrie is a light read, a short book (I read it in one sitting) but SO full of love. Love, guidance and wisdom. From an old man to a young man and ultimately, everyone.

“The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it.”
(p. 42)

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” (p. 43)

“ . . . If you’ve found meaning in your life you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five.”
(p. 118)

According to Mark Haddon himself, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) is not based on Asperges nor any other specific disorder, “if anything it’s a novel about difference, about being an outsider, about seeing the world in a surprising and revealing way.”

Which is an accurate way of putting it for it’s definitely not the same as another. Firstly, the chapters aren’t like usual chapters. Instead, the story progresses through prime numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 etc. Next, Haddon challenges typical story conventions. His chapters are often too short, his sentences too lengthy and his prose/his protagonist, Christopher’s prose, too random. However; that is what I (and many others since he’s won loads of awards) consider so refreshing about it. Haddon’s mystery novel really does make you see in a new way.

Haddon achieves this by comparing most people’s thought processes to that of Christopher’s: which is paying immaculate attention to detail and living in the moment. While most people would be thinking “I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on,” and “I wonder if Julie has given birth yet,” in a cow field, Christopher would be inspecting/admiring the different shades of grass and the contrast of the surrounding flowers, sky, animals and architecture against them. In other words, Haddon/Christopher examine the every-day and the mundane so closely and so objectively that they become extraordinary again – since we tend to overlook/ignore them in this busy busy day and age.

I laughed, I cringed, I empathised with the Christopher and I continued to think about him after the book had ended – all the good things. I totes recommend it and so does good ole Ian:

“A superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy” -Ian McEwan, author of Atonement.

A little teaser..no teaser makes it sound like I think it’s good.. let’s say a little “extract” from my novel-in-progress:

There is an art to everything in Japan. From taking off your shoes before entering a house to eating ramen with chopsticks in one hand and a ladle in the other. Fortunately, in most places, beginners are accounted for. The first time I ate ramen, I joked about needing a bib then I was actually handed one. As for the ramen itself, excuse me while I salivate into my keyboard. Authentic Japanese ramen cannot be adequately described by words alone. A high definition picture and a smell detector are vital. If tea is a hug in a cup, Ramen is a Hollywood romance; too good to be true. Except it’s not imagined or supposed, it truly is real, until it disappears and it will.

Since we’re all writing a novel in one way or another… below is an organised list of my favorite writing quotes to keep ya’ll inspired.

Just keep swimming (writing):

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”
Richard Bach

“Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.”Ralph Keyes

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
Louis L’Amour

“Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.” Philip José Farmer

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”Aristotle

“It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.”Will Shetterly

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’…and it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.'”Maya Angelou

“It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.”Gerald Brenan

Write what you know:

“Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.”
William Cobbett

“The secret of good writing is telling the truth.”
Gordon Lish

Despite what they say, it’s okay if you don’t have a clear direction/outline:

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
E.L. Doctorow

“Writing is always a process of discovery—I never know the end, or even the events on the next page, until they happen. There’s a constant interplay between the imagining and shaping of the story.”
Kim Edwards

“Writing is always a process of discovery—I never know the end, or even the events on the next page, until they happen. There’s a constant interplay between the imagining and shaping of the story.”
Kim Edwards

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
Sylvia Plath

Cut the adverbs, the exclamation marks and the semicolons:

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
Stephen King

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
Mark Twain

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Remember, you’re not alone:

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”Ernest Hemingway

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”Kurt Vonnegut

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.”
Neil Gaiman

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.”Flannery O’Connor

“Read Read Read”:

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”William Faulkner

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
Stephen King

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
Stephen King

Last but not least, LIVE:

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”Jack London

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”Stephen King

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”Henry Thoreau